Upcoming events for data community in Spain

Once a large number of open data events took place last 5^th March to commemorate International Open data Day, the national community is still working on data organising different meetings at regional and national level, where experts of different sectors reflect about the revolution of opening up information.

This week is opened by the workshop “From Open data to Big Data” organized by public entity Open Data Euskadi together with Innobasque. The event, which takes place in Bilbao, has been designed as an opportunity for SMEs, freelancers, students and agents interested in big data to dialogue on innovation and competitiveness in the region at the same time they discuss about legal barriers and professional profiles needed to make the most of data value.

In addition, during the event the Open Data Euskadi prizes will be awarded, contest held in the third quarter of 2015. In order to promote the culture of re-use in Basque Country, the competition was divided into two contests in which, on one hand, the best idea and, secondly, the best app based on open data were selected.

Only two days after, thursday 17^th of March, the University of Alicante organizes a new edition of Open Data Meetings, focussing on the opportunity of entrepreneurship and the impact of open data in citizen participation and accountability.

The agenda, divided in two sessions, will include the strategic vision of different international open data organizations as the node of Open Data Institute (ODI) in Madrid or the Maderata, a network of opening up research data. Afterwards, the programme will be based on open data entrepreneurship, presenting the initiatives developed within the project of University of Alicante, UA:Emprende.

Some weeks later, for the fourth year in a row, Open Knowledge Spain organizes the annual Data Journalism Conference that gathers in Medialab-Prado -Madrid- the national community to take part in the different workshops, roundtables, conferences and discussions that will take place from 6^th to 7^th May. The program of the conference is not yet closed and any user can make a proposal regarding to the following topics: research journalism, visualization, open data, digital literacy, security and privacy of communications.

Attendance is open and free, upon registration through the Meetup platform as the number of places available is limited. Nevertheless, for those people not able to attend the conference, the meeting will be broadcasted through video streaming on the website.

For further information about open data events worldwide, follow datos.gob. in Twitter  where the most important events are published together with developments, projects and initiatives to open up and re-use open data.